October 24, 2009

The Wisconsin State Capitol, photographed last night. Why is it lit up pink? Why is anything pink pink these days? Pink was once a sweet, cheery color associated with little girls. And now it means cancer. That one special cancer that petulantly insists that we acknowledge its existence all the time. I will not be ignored, Breast Cancer stamps its feet again and again. Breast Cancer! Leave pink alone!

The mass marketing boys are honing their skills at an omnipresent rally against a Common Enemy. Better the Enemy Breast Cancer than the Enemy CO2 Emissions/global warming hoax or the Enemy Fox News as the target for a Two Minutes of Hate.

"Yeah! It's TERRIBLE that a disease that was ignored and shunned for years would receive any recognition!!!"

Breast cancer was "ignored and shunned"? Since when? Sorry, the whole "breast cancer victims were treated like crap until our new Enlightened era of non-stop talking about it because men hated women" sounds like so much propagandistic crap. I'm pretty sure that breast cancer was always considered a serious problem just like every other cancer, and that no one "shunned" anyone, even back when no one knew what to do about people with cancer except to give them laudanum for the pain. People just didn't used to make as much fuss about themselves and their ailments as we do today. And since we are all now supposed to be attention whores, the idea of keeping one's problems to oneself is looked upon with horror.

Breast cancer awareness has gotten out of hand. Charities can just become monsters of nonsense if people let them, and people have let breast cancer awareness get way out of hand. Frankly, it insults everybody else with other kind of cancer.

... and now they tell us getting checked for is not that effective, and therefore not that important to be aware of. Fantastic.

It didn't occur to me that "mela" meant black, since they always refer to melanin as pigment, not blackness.

When I had my melanoma in 1991, it was an existing flat, dark mole that suddenly turned pink & black. It also became a bump, which I noticed before anything else. If a doctor hadn't told me the warning signs several years before, or it had been on the back of my thigh instead of the front, I'd be long dead by now.

When the state house in Annapolis turned pink a couple weeks ago, I thought maybe some renegade midshipmen who were excited that DADT might be overturned had pulled a prank. But I guess it was really just a celebration of breast cancer. Pity.